Author Caitlin Moran's How to Build a Girl knocked Harry Potter luminary J. K. Rowling's memoir out of the number-one spot in 2014. The method in which she celebrated was, shall we say, less than memorable.
"The brilliant thing about the way I celebrate things is that I remember very little when I finally wake up, three days later, still drunk, with one shoe in a hedge outside," Moran said. "It was only right that the Jesus of books let me knock Dame Hogwarts off the top spot. I was just sad it wasn't a George R. R. Martin book [Game of Thrones] I took the top spot from. I'm still furious he killed Ned Stark. I really hope the next series sees him getting his head sewn back on, and coming back to sort everything out."
It took Moran five months to complete How to Build a Girl.
"It had to be written in that time," Moran recalled. "On the bright side, I'm a very fast writer. On the negative side, your ass hurts so badly sitting down for that amount of time that I subsequently spent the next six months lying face down on the floor begging my children to hit it with pillow, so I could get the feeling back."
How to Build a Girl delves into the seemingly timeless subjects of character building, picking yourself up from your bootstraps to ultimately achieve success, unrequited love, ageism in Hollywood, and the general idea that a zip code holds no substantial power over one's destiny in the world.
"I wanted to write about the point in your teenage years when you realize that how your parents have made you isn't enough, and you're going to have to start building yourself," Moran said. "I wanted to write about falling in unrequited love with an older man, and him actually having the decency to not hump youunlike in every Hollywood film ever, where Will Ferrell is approaching the age of a freaking wizard, but still gets to bag 22-year-old hotties. Meanwhile, Maggie Gyllenhall is told she's too old, at 38, to play the wife of a 55-year-old."
Moran had another incentive for writing the book.
"Mainly, I was furious with Fifty Shades of Grey," she said. "There are a very predictable set of childhood/teenage preconditions that will make someone want to be a masochistwill make them enjoy it, seek relief from it. Anatasia Grey has none of those preconditions. She's just someone being beaten up and stalked by a creepy billionaire, in exchange for goods. She's essentially being beaten on the clitoris with a hairbrush in exchange for an iPad."
Speaking of reproductive organs, one might argue that old( er ) white men appear to be in control of the laws that affect women's lives in the United States.
"Women trying to control their fertility, in order to have mastery of their lives, is as ancient a practice as humans trying to control their fields, in order to eat," Moran said. "The society we live in is shaped by abortionhow can it not be, with a third of women now having an abortion in their lifetime? That is a gigantic force in the way we liveit informs every aspect of our economy, industry and sexuality, but the merciful, positive aspects of it are never seen or discussed. Squeamish and frightened, we only ever discuss abortion when someone seeks to curtail safe, legal access to it."
Abortion is a subject close to Moran's heart.
"The simplicity of why women choose to seek an abortion is devastating: they feel they cannot look after a child. Cannot," Moran said. "I assure any anti-abortionist they may disregard their sneaking feelings that 40 million women a year have abortions foolishly, recklesslythat it is done with the same selfish giddiness as binge-drinking, or twerking, and therefore to be discouraged by the high-minded, for the greater good of society. What do anti-abortionists think, exactly, that the world would do with those extra 40 million children a yearborn to unwilling mothers? For whose benefit, exactly, would we be assembling this unhappy battalion, born from broken, unwilling mothers?"
Feminism is making a strong reappearance with young stars like Emma Watson, Kristen Stewart and Miley Cyrus being outspoken advocates for women's rights.
"I feel like I've died and gone to feminist heaven. [Five years ago,] I predicted that the next wave of feminism would break in pop music firstbecause it's the art form that responds quickest to social changethen TV, then film," Moran explained. "And so it's come to pass. There aren't really any male music artists worth fussing about at the moment, apart from the continuing, enjoyable dementedness of Kanye. It's all about the ladies: Lorde, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Adele, and Rihanna."
On the television side, "all I care to watch is Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Amy Schumer, Broad City, Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, Rebel Wilson, and Jennifer Lawrence. We're making new kinds of women right now. Dirty, funny, relaxed, powerful women who've realized that another word for 'taboo subjects' is 'totally untouched dynamite material.' I'm so stoked for Lady Ghostbusters…Ghostbusts, perhapsthat I could shit a unicorn."
Moran is the first to admit that she enjoys writing "sexy literature for teens."
"I like useful books. As a teenage girl, homeschooled, living in the local library, pre-internet, I relied on books, movies and TV to teach me what sex was," she said. "I liked novels that described it in detail, so I'd have some clue of what to do when I started doing it, and I liked it when the sex didn't involve being massively beaten and murdered [Marquis de Sade] or humping a sociopath spy who described women's nipples as looking 'like walnuts' [James Bond]."
And explain she did.
"I wanted to put as much detail into How to Build a Girl as possible," she said. "How to deal with a gigantic penis; how to deal with a boyfriend who wants to whip you; how to masturbate; how to kissand to make it funny. But it's not Young AdultI'd say half my audience, as with all my books, are women of my age, and older, reading it and going 'Christ, it's all coming back to me now.' Being a teenager the year 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' came out, Courtney Love was queen, and you could leave the house wearing little more than a petticoat and a pair of Doc Martens. Fun was so cheap back then. You could look amazing for $1."
Kirkus Reviews referred to Moran as "Britain's Lena Dunham."
"[When Lena Dunham] was filmed naked, on the toilet, eating cake, just before the rest of the female film and TV industry rocked up starved into tiny dresses, botoxed to the tits and ready to kill anyone who took a bad picture of them, is one of the most punk-rock things of the last 10 years," Moran said. "She's making a whole generation of women realize having a belly is normal. Just that alone is a tiny, brilliant, beautiful revolution."
Speaking of beautiful bellies, Moran is looking forward to her self-dubbed foodie tour stop in Chicago.
"I want to see if deep pan pizza is not disgusting in Chicago. It's revolting in the UK," Moran said. "We kind of blame you for it. I need someone to recommend somewhere I can have my mind blown, Chicago-style, with deep-pan crust and cheese. Also my understanding is that every hot improv comedian in the world comes from/lives/lived in Chicago, so I'm just going to wander around holding, say, a basket, and going up to anyone amusing-looking and saying 'Let's sing a song about a basket in the style of a hoe-down. Go!' I hope to find my new husband/soul mate in the 24 hours I'm there."
Caitlin Moran will discuss her new novel, How to Build a Girl, at the Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark St., at 7:30 p.m on July 10. Visit WomenAndChildrenFirst.com .